


a compass for the soul

by bummerang



Category: RWBY
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, cloqwork fanzine entry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22664062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bummerang/pseuds/bummerang
Summary: Ozpin peered into Qrow’s cursed project more closely. “This isn’t a crib. It’s a weapon.”
Relationships: Qrow Branwen/Ozpin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	a compass for the soul

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the Cloqwork fanzine~

Maybe the planets had aligned. Or the sun had burped up an incredible sunspot.

Anyway, something celestially momentous had to have occurred, because Ozpin had taken time off. Or, most likely, Glynda had time taken off for him. Three weeks of it. Miracle of miracles.

They spent the first night of the miracle in bed, wrapped thoroughly around each other and snugly tucked in three layers of the softest blankets Qrow could get his hands on. His choices in creature comforts didn’t used to extend to handwoven silk sheets and a distracting awareness of thread counts, but they also didn’t used to include Ozpin. He found the quality of his life significantly increased with the addition of all three.

The first morning after had started with more cuddling than Qrow would ever admit to being capable of in his entire lifetime. In a moment of rare optimism bolstered by a bleary Ozpin kissing a burning line down the side of his neck, Qrow thought it’d be a good day.

An hour and forty-seven minutes, a box of hot glue sticks, and two sore thumbs later, he realized he should have told optimism to go eat itself.

“Qrow,” Ozpin began as he stepped into the living room, and Qrow recognized his tone as the one normally reserved for things like _‘we’ve run out of peach jam’_ and _‘I found a roll of molded bread in your jacket’_. “You have many talents, but woodworking is not one of them.”

_You think I have talents?_ “Hey, it’s in one piece, isn’t it?”

“I regret to inform you that ‘one piece’ isn’t an acceptable metric when the nails are poking through the bottom. And the top. And the sides.” Ozpin peered into Qrow’s cursed project more closely. “This isn’t a crib. It’s a weapon.”

“I was gonna cut the ends off,” Qrow muttered, vaguely pushing at his unhelpful partner to go away, but Ozpin merely took Qrow’s hand and set his mug of coffee in it. “Make it less—pointy.”

“Many of these don’t appear to offer any structural support.”

“Fuck off.” But there was no heat in it, and when Ozpin made to wander back to the kitchen, Qrow followed closely, his brain still a little fried from the feeling of Ozpin’s hand briefly cradling his own, guiding his fingers around the mug.

It was still new, this touching thing. Of course they’d touched a million times—a reassuring hand on a shoulder, a quiet nudge with a knee, grabbing an arm in panic—but there was _that_ and then there was _this_. A sleepy kiss shared at dawn, eyes closed and foreheads pressed together beneath the shower spray—coffee given carefully in amusement. Things full with meaning and gentle with a warmth that made Qrow’s throat ache and his heart melt into useless mush.

(A familiar part of him that sounded suspiciously like Raven kept echoing _pathetic, pathetic_ , but most of him rang to a different tune nowadays. Urgent, almost hopeful. _Could you live with the alternative?_ )

“Remind me why you can’t simply buy a crib?” Ozpin said as he stared into the utensil drawer. They owned three spatulas, all of them identical (because Qrow saw they were buy-two-get-one), and Ozpin always took the time to look at each before selecting. Qrow suspected he did this to be annoying. “Or at least one that is ready-made to assemble?”

“It’s the thought, right? Means more if I do it myself,” Qrow said, feeling enough heat rising in his cheeks that he opened the fridge and stuck his head in it. “I didn’t really do anything the first time, for Yang,” he said to the block of swiss. “Got too caught up trying to find Raven. So like, Summer’s been saying Yang will get too big for her own crib in a couple of months. And Yang loves Ruby already, doesn’t wanna be apart from her.”

“So it’s for both of them,” Ozpin said, voice soft and taking pity, hand reaching past Qrow’s cheek for the carton of eggs. “Well, fortunately, you have time.”

“Time?” Qrow repeated to the orange juice.

“Ruby is a newborn. She’ll need to be a little older before she can safely sleep next to a rambunctious two year old.”

Qrow hoped his silence was telling.

Ozpin didn’t disappoint. “She’s still soft and squishy.”

“Oh.” It seemed like something he should have thought about.

“Would you like some help with it?”

Qrow finally left his shelter, taking the milk with him. The offer had come tentatively. Ozpin had his back to him, facing the stove, working the spatula at the crackling pan. The kitchen smelled like toast and eggs and onions.

The warm mushy feeling came back in full force. Qrow felt ridiculous. It was just breakfast, for fuck’s sake.

“Is woodworking one of _your_ talents?” Qrow said, topping off Ozpin’s mug.

“It could be, though I’d have to check a little more thoroughly.”

It was said so offhand that Qrow had to take a moment. And then another. And one more, but with what he felt was a healthy load of trepidation, because this was uncharted territory and he’d only had a scrap of map to begin with.

“Uh,” he said, intelligibly.

Then, because he was stupid, “Isn’t that cheating?”

Ozpin glanced over his shoulder with a smile as he upended the contents of the pan onto a plate. “It isn’t cheating if it can’t be helped. Probably. As it happens, I have enough knowledge to be certain that what we have in the living room is a passable reconstruction of an early age torture device.”

Qrow was mush, but he could be indignant mush too, damn it. “Fuck you.”

“Later, perhaps,” and Qrow was saved from his uncertain mental flailing when Ozpin slid a plate full with omelette and toast in front of him.

Qrow aggressively shoveled his breakfast because he was very good at fighting losing battles, but Ozpin only smiled, infuriatingly patient and fond enough to set a small fire under Qrow’s heart, and kissed a bit of egg from the corner of his mouth.

It was so simple, and it unraveled him anyway.

Breakfast passed mostly in silence as they ate, their legs hooked together beneath the tiny kitchen table. After the dishes were washed and left to dry, Ozpin seemed ready to attempt his convolutedly inherited expertise.

The balcony was still wet with the earlier morning’s rain, drops of water clinging to the underside of the railing lined atop the low wall, but Ozpin had refused to do any sanding in the apartment, opting instead to bring out an old sheet of tarp and cover the floor, grabbing a few pillows for them to sit on. Qrow was meant to be helping, but he’d given up right from the beginning, still too much on the feeling of Ozpin’s lips against the corner of his, the uncommon contentment melted amber in his eyes.

Ozpin didn’t seem bothered by his distraction. Qrow leaned back against him, arms crossed and eyes closed, lulled into bone-deep comfort by the rhythmic scrape of sandpaper against wood.

It was nice. It was also making Qrow restless as fuck.

“Oz. In the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to make history by literally exploding out of my skin.”

“This is _you_ r project,” Ozpin reminded him, nothing stern and everything exasperated.

“That you said I had plenty of time for, so I can do it later. What if I want time _now_ to do something else?” As much as Qrow wanted to finish the glorified baby prison before the turn of the century, it was extremely rare for Ozpin to claim large stretches of time off from _anything_. For once, they could do more than muck about for a few hours. They could muck about for three weeks.

“Far be it from me to forbid you from spending your time as you please,” Ozpin said, and Qrow felt the gentle weight of his head as it settled back against his own. “What did you have in mind?”

That was a really good question. What did people do with free time, anyway? “We could go somewhere, if you want?”

“Where would you like to go?”

He’d just spent the last week squelching through swampland in the Stapleton Moors two hundred miles southwest of Vale. Five pairs of socks had been given up for lost, contaminated by who-fucking-knew-what-but-he-definitely-didn’t-wanna-know. Traveling was ruined for him, at least for a little while. If he had to be honest, he regretted the suggestion, but it was already out there. “Where do _you_ wanna go?”

“Isn’t this about how you want to spend your time?” Ozpin said, clearly confused. “It wouldn’t make sense for me to pick.”

“It would make all the sense for you to pick, because I don’t actually care where we go.” Not completely true, but he’d follow Ozpin even if, for some inexplicable reason, he wanted to go to the Stapleton Moors. He wouldn’t do it happily, but he could bear all the stinky humidity for Oz. “Anywhere you want. Mistral, Polaris, Watermaine—”

Ozpin stopped sanding, but he didn’t say anything. Qrow waited. Then he realized the silence was a telling one.

He didn’t want to tell it anything back. It was one thing to admit to himself, privately and deep within his cups, that he’d fallen head over ass and was still tumbling on like the world’s hottest mess.

But they were still new at this, and maybe he couldn’t expect Ozpin to just _know_. Maybe, even especially, not this. “I don’t care where we go, as long as I’m—we’re—” He made a noise that definitely wasn’t a word.

Yes, spontaneous combustion was acceptable. Any second now.

Ozpin shifted, then. It took Qrow a moment to realize he was meant to turn as well, and he did so hesitantly, looking down as they scooted to face each other. Qrow remained sitting cross-legged, but Ozpin moved to his knees.

“Sometimes I wonder if I neglect you,” he said quietly.

Qrow looked back up. Ozpin’s expression betrayed nothing, but somehow Qrow was getting the sense that he was looking at too much.

“We’ve been doing this for—five months? And in that time we must have had only a few weeks to each other, at most.”

“We’re busy,” Qrow said, uncertain if he was answering the right question. And there was a question. He could see it now in the way Ozpin’s eyes were narrowed, in the way he held his arms by the elbows, as if trying to shrink into himself.

“I know.”

“Can’t be helped.”

“No.”

“Do you think I’m also—‘cause if _this_ is neglect then—“

“No. Not at all. I suppose that—well. Ah. It’s that—I hope that by the end you will know how much I—that is, what I—” Ozpin frowned deeply. “Do you know, I don’t think I can do this.”

Qrow laughed, and got on his knees. “It’s good. We can be shit at this together.” He took Ozpin’s hands in his own, holding them tight. “I should probably let you know that I’m not looking for this to end anytime soon. Or, you know, at all.”

“That’s fortunate, because neither am I. But all things eventually end.” Ozpin’s face was soft, wistful. “Or, well. Most things.”

“Not this.” Stubborn was his middle name in spirit. Print was too ugly.

“ _Qrow_ ,” but it was fond. “I—well. I’m sure you know, but I worry often about being remembered. The nature of this—of what I am—I worry about what I will leave behind, and what it will mean to others. Sometimes I wonder if what will be remembered of me could truly be considered _mine_.”

_No. No no—_

Qrow wanted to reassure him, to say something useful, but the words were stuck in his throat, clogged there painfully with inadequacy.

“But yesterday you gave me a cherry and mango popsicle dipped in chocolate.”

Qrow blinked.

Ozpin smiled. “I don’t even remember mentioning liking this very specific thing to you. I don’t know how you could have acquired it. And a month ago, you brought scones all the way from my favorite bakery in Argus. Two months ago, you gave me an antique tie pin you found in Atlas, because you know I’m fond of that burnished look.”

Ozpin brought their hands together between them. “When my leg does poorly for the day, you ply me with sweets. You’ve collected more seashells for me than I have books. You pick the green onions out of my food. You let me sleep on the left side of the bed—“

Qrow leaned up—and missed the mark a little, but a kiss was still a kiss. “I’ll remember,” he breathed against Ozpin’s cheek, placing another kiss when he felt Ozpin’s hands stiffen in his. “Your weird, sweet-smelling vanilla soap—“ A kiss higher, against the bone. “How much you hate brussel sprouts—“ A kiss to his temple, nuzzling the hair above his ear. “You know I—“

“ _Yes_.” And Ozpin kissed him to the cadence of the tune that was now ringing within Qrow—like absolution, like a future—demonstrating exactly how disappointing the alternative would have been.

The sun didn’t come out that day. They made do.

-


End file.
